Last week’s Firestarters event pitted Data against Creativity. Well, the premise was meant to be controversial and provocative, starting out with Will Sansom from Contagious stating: “In 10 years’ time your agency will be an algorithm”.
What developed was an agreement that data can inform, improve and inspire creative – whether that is display ads, email marketing, Twitter posts or TV commercials.
Will quoted David E Martin’s premise that creativity (read marketing) has been about seduction: persuading the customer they want your brand, and it needs to move from deduction to fulfilment: paying attention to what the customer actually wants. Enter data.
But how will the industry react to the idea that brand loyalty is on the brink of extinction, particularly amongst younger consumers? What wasn’t addressed, was the fact that brands can tap into the loyalty that Millennials more often gives to causes – whether health, equality, environment or so on. I also didn’t (and don’t) fully agree with the premise that everyone is unique (when it comes to marketing). There’s a whole science of behavioural economics that goes way beyond what marketing’s ‘segmentation’ manages. While the toppings may vary – pineapple yes, anchovies no – students will always eat pizza. Not all of them, but a lot.
I know that’s a crude example, but personalisation can go too far sometimes and it’s not always the right route. As Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive Mobile, pointed out – we all say digital allows better measurement, but one thing we don’t measure is how many people we piss off. Let’s not forget we’re talking communications and conversations. Advertising has been about talking to strangers and you talk to strangers in a very different way to how you talk to your friends and family. That’s where data can take us. Nike’s fitness app ended up with 100,000 variations for 100,000 people – talking to each one individually.
Letting people in to create their own ad is the next step on. Hijacking causes, events and trends. can get attention but can also fall flat, but as Jon Burkhardt pointed out – throw out the brand spam and start using real-time interactions and algorithms to let people be the creators, like EA Sports’ Giferator and you might be onto a winner.
So where did Firestarters leave the data vs. creativity debate? Hopefully with creatives wanting to better understand data and data analysts wanting to understand the creative process. It’s not an either / or debate and the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers will take a joint effort. Here’s something else to add into the mix, when looking at data and personalisation. Can algorithms discriminate? NYTimes today suggests they do.
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